Month: June 2016

This book is for Makers, community organizers, business leaders, policy makers, and other city leaders in local government. It is designed to help public, private, and city leaders understand the Maker movement and the impact it is having on economic opportunity in cities. Have a look!

Amid a massive landfill in Cateura, Paraguay, children find hope by making music on instruments built from recycled trash. In a slum town where families survive by collecting and reselling garbage (and where a violin can cost more than a house), a visionary music teacher gathered a small team to plunder the landfill for materials and construct an ensemble of “recycled” instruments. In just a few years, their innovation has led to a thriving music school in Cateura and a youth orchestra that performs internationally. For members of the Recycled Orchestra, material poverty is not an obstacle to a life rich with music. They have each learned to value greatly how music impacts their lives, helping them express creativity, build self-confidence, and strengthen community.

The Musical Instrument Museum features the inspiring story and the innovative instruments of the Recycled Orchestra through a Latin America gallery exhibit and docent mini-tours. The Recycled Orchestra exhibit features eight recycled instruments from Paraguay as well as video and images of the youth orchestra and the environment of Cateura.

The scorching temperatures mean 2016 is all but certain to be the hottest year ever recorded, beating the previous hottest year in 2015, which itself beat 2014. This run of three record years is also unprecedented and, without climate change, would be a one in a million chance. Scaife says: “Including this year so far, 16 of the 17 warmest years on record have been since 2000 – it’s a shocking statistic.”

In a Tony Awards night shadowed by the tragedy in Orlando, Fla., prizewinners and other performers worked hard to strike a balance between joy and reflection. Here are some moments to remember:

The Hardest-Working Man in Showbiz

Soon after delivering a tremulous speech addressed to the TV audience (“Hate will never win”), the Tonys host, James Corden, dove into a breathless mash-up of 20 Broadway hits, concluding with some elegant hoofing to “We’re in the Money” from “42nd Street.”

#TonysSoDiverse

“Think of tonight as the Oscars, but with diversity,” Mr. Corden joked in his opening monologue. And the show delivered: In a first for Broadway, Tony voters gave the four musical performance awards to black actors: Cynthia Erivo of “The Color Purple” and Leslie Odom Jr., Renée Elise Goldsberry and Daveed Diggs of “Hamilton.”

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Sonnet

Lin-Manuel Miranda accepted the award for best score for “Hamilton” at the Tony Awards with a sonnet addressing his wife, Vanessa Nadal, as well as the shooting in Orlando, Fla.

A Poem for the Moment

In his acceptance speech for best score for “Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda provided the broadcast’s emotional high point, reading a sonnet he had written that cited “senseless acts of tragedy” and included the repeated “and love is love, is love, is love, is love” that brought down the house.

Asked later why he decided to address the situation this way, he said: “We live in this world where beautiful and horrible things exist at the same time. You can’t let that go by, particularly when theater doesn’t exist without the L.G.B.T. community.”

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Living Proof, and Olivo Labs have developed a new material that can temporarily protect and tighten skin and smooth wrinkles, according to an MIT News article.

Even better? The team plans to develop the material further for use in transdermal drug delivery and treatment of skin conditions, such as eczema and other types of dermatitis, and also adapt it to provide long-lasting ultraviolet protection.

Hidden truths permeate our world; they’re inaccessible to our senses, but math allows us to go beyond our intuition to uncover their mysteries. In this survey of mathematical breakthroughs, Fields Medal winner Cédric Villani speaks to the thrill of discovery and details the sometimes perplexing life of a mathematician. “Beautiful mathematical explanations are not only for our pleasure,” he says. “They change our vision of the world.”